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Kiki Tidwell, when she was growing up, had planned on entering the family business. She was raised in Hawaii, and throughout her childhood she and her parents traveled to Aspen, CO often to tend to the family restaurant. When Tidwell graduated high school, she enrolled in the hotel and restaurant management program at the University of Denver.

She never expected then that she would become a prominent angel investor and burgeoning supporter of cleantech innovation.

After college, Tidwell moved to Sun Valley, ID, “to become a ski bum,” she says. She owned a restaurant for a while, before discovering that there were “a lot more lucrative ways to make money that is based on a less fickle customer,” she says.

At the age of 51, Tidwell admittedly was not the typical candidate for the prestigious fellowship. Most of the fellows in her class are “fresh out of business school,” she says. This is because the program is really designed to give investors “hands on training early on in their careers.”

In fact, one of 32 fellows in the 15th class of the program, Tidwell is a minority—for more than one reason. She’s a woman. She’s a seasoned investor with years of experience behind her. And she’s one of the first angels to be admitted to the program. However, one of the primary reasons she applied to the program is that Tidwell is convinced that angel investors, particularly ones with years of experience under their belts, could benefit from the lessons venture investing have to offer.

“Up until this year they’ve only taken venture capitalists. So this is the groundbreaking year that I made the pitch to them that angels are really a key part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem as well,” Tidwell says.

An angel investor belonged in the program, Tidwell says, because traditional venture capitalists have gravitated toward larger investments in seed and late-stage companies, rather than the smaller deals it takes to get most startups up and running.

Angels, she says, are playing a growing role in the innovation world—especially in burgeoning industries like cleantech—in that they’re increasingly behind the early-stage funding that gets small projects out of the labs, and into the marketplace.

“There’s a gap that has emerged. Venture capitalists used to fund smaller amounts—now they’re raising billion-dollar funds,” she says. “We [angels] fund the really early stage companies, we nurture them along, so that the venture capitalists have more of a product to invest in.”

As part of her fellowship, Tidwell will spend 24 months working a full-time apprenticeship at a venture capital firm—a learning experience that will provide her with skills and knowledge that … Next Page »